A/N: Please excuse how short this chapter is. I've been super busy with school and my art, and this is what I've been able to get done between all of that. More to come soon next chapter, and maybe another story is brewing. We'll see. Thanks for reading!

Once Artie was stable, and his body wasn't armed for another attack on his health, he was transferred to Ohio State for further investigation. This meant that instead of my fifteen minute drive back and forth to Lima General, a sixth of my day was to be spent driving North through a quarter of Ohio. Let me tell you – it was a lonely and un-scenic drive, and if it weren't for the man I loved, it wouldn't have happened at all.

All of my time spent transferring back and forth cut down on my work hours, giving my boss another possible reason to fire me. I scraped by guilt tripping my fellow co-workers to cover for me with the 'my boyfriend's in the hospital and…' speech. Worked every time – especially on the one's who've met Artie before. Maybe if the pay out from the trail was big enough, I'd be able to quit my, just barely over minimum wage, job.

It took two weeks for the 'geniuses' at Ohio to figure out what the problem was, the one that made him so sick. Artie wasn't allergic to the scar tissue removal medicine, but the particular filler used in the pill. The allergic reaction could be counteracted with yet another prescription, so Artie could continue with the procedure. The prodding, poking, and blood work could finally come to an end. Although; I was waiting for his circulatory system to fail first on the account of the amount of blood taken from his veins for testing.

"Is it going to be like this the next couple years, Tina?" Artie asked me one afternoon during visiting hours.

He was awake and erect in a room of his own, unlike his brief stay at Lima General. The walls were a tint of blue away from white, and under the small picture window, curtained as cheaply as possible, was an air conditioner that blasted air cold enough to create ridged tiny bumps on his skin. Even below the waist.

I squeezed his hand as I leaned in from my plastic waiting room chair, "Like what?"

"Me being here," he slouched.

"It's not so bad," I shrugged.

"You hate it."

"I don't."

"Come on, Tee – it sucks."

I responded with another shrug, wondering how long I could keep up my 'I have to stay strong for him' ordeal.

"You don't miss me at home?" He playfully pouted.

"No," I answered with as much of a poker face as I could handle with such a lie.

His cute and pretend sad face suddenly turned all too real.

"Oh Artie, I'm only kidding," I reassured, pulling myself up onto the edge of his bead before leaning forward to kiss his forehead. "Of course I miss you."

"You're not just saying that now?"

"I'm not just saying that now, Artie," I said, smoothing down his hair.

Bringing my hands into my lap, I made the impulsive decision to try and sit over his lap for a cuddle. Briefly, I stood up only to sit back down in the opposite direction before swinging my legs over his thighs so that my feet touched the other side of his pelvic bone. I then wrapped my arms around his neck and rested my knees against his chest.

"Actually, I miss you a lot at home. Our apartment is really empty at night without you," I admitted.

"That little thing?"

"It may be overwhelming for the two of us – but it's much too big for just one."

"Uh-huh."

"I need my big, strong, super human strength-ed boyfriend to keep me safe from the cockroaches," I pouted.

"Isn't that redundant?"

"Shut up," I giggled, burying my face into his neck.

That day happened to be the date for Artie to have the brief procedure to extract cells from his spinal cord to be grown in a lab across the country in California. He wasn't nervous – not one bit, and I guess I wasn't either, but for me, it marked the true start of the whole process of attempting to get Artie to walk again. It was all becoming so real. Never in my life, I thought I'd see or even hear about the day where spinal cord research and development would come so far. It made my inner teenager beyond proud.